There’s been a ton of chatter and mockery about Kelly Conway’s use of the phrase “alternative facts” to describe Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s initial statements about attendance at the Trump inauguration. Here’s a piece at The Hill by Jennifer Calfas that states:
George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” is surging in popularity in the days since President Trump’s inauguration.
The iconic book, published nearly 70 years ago, is the sixth best-selling book on Amazon as of Tuesday morning.
Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway on Sunday defended the White House’s statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration by referring to it “alternative facts.”
She was referring to White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s insistence that Friday’s swearing-in was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” despite photos and videos showing that former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration clearly had a bigger crowd on the National Mall.
Many on social media compared “alternative facts” to the use of “doublethink,” a type of rhetoric in “1984” by which the government presents two contradictory facts as both true.
I checked the dateline on the article, and it was 01/24/17 08:47 AM EST—in other words, this morning. This means that it was a half a day subsequent to Spicer’s clarification of exactly what he meant when he said that about the large audience:
QUESTION: And do you stand by your statement that was the most watched inaugural —
SPICER: I think —
QUESTION: — address of the —
SPICER: Sure, it was the most watched inaugural. When you look at — look, you look at just the one network alone got 16.9 million people online. Another couple of the networks there were tens of million people that watched that online. Never mind the audience that was here, the 31 million people watching it on television.
Combine that with the tens of million of people that watched it online, on a device. It’s unquestionable. I — I don’t — and I don’t see any numbers that — that dispute that when you add up attendance, viewership, total audience in terms(ph) of tablets, phones, on television. I’d love to see any information that proves that otherwise.
The WaPo transcript to which I linked is an interesting document. If you look at it, you’ll see two things. The first is that there were many other topics discussed at that press conference, mostly concerning what Trump has been doing in his first few days of office. But that’s not what social media is talking about. The second is that, as with Trump’s inaugural speech, the WaPo “helpfully” annotates the press conference, annotations that read like a continuation of an argument with Spicer rather than anything intended to elucidate. For example, in response to that quote of Spicer’s about adding up attendance—a quote that gives the lie to the meme that Spicer/Trump lied about this—the WaPo manages to grind out the following objection (this is the sum total of the commentary on the subject):
Spicer’s quote was that it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration ”” period ”” both in person and around the globe.”
He seems to be combining those two things, rather than saying it was also the biggest in-person crowd AND the biggest global crowd. If that’s what he meant initially, he probably should have said “combined” rather than “both.”
The WaPo’s objection is absurd. Yes indeed, “combined” probably would have been somewhat better and would have perhaps stopped the press from making its own reinterpretation of what he said, but to demand that level of precision in language is an obvious stretch, an attempt to avoid saying Spicer is making an excellent point. I think what he said and meant was fairly clear, as evidenced by his use of the word “witnessed” rather than “attended” (you’d use the latter for the live crowd), the word “audience” rather than “crowd,” as well as the phrase “both in person AND around the globe.”
Just call it a misunderstanding and move on. But the meme that Spicer was in the wrong is just too good to abandon.
And that Hill piece by Calfas is even worse, with its purposeful selection of which alternative facts to report and which to leave out. Calfas ignores Spicer’s elucidation entirely and pretends it didn’t happen. So will the real Orwellian please stand up?
And if sales of Orwell’s book have soared, perhaps it’s not just the left reading it in response to Conway. Maybe it’s the right in response to articles like Calfas’ and annotations in the WaPo.
So, what’s my own take on “alternative facts”? There are different sorts of facts. Two plus two equals four is a fact, and there is no alternative to it (although Orwell pointed out that if the Party wills it otherwise, some will believe it’s five).
But there are other kinds of facts. “How many people attended or watched the inauguration?” is a question. That question has an answer, but there are two problems with the answer. The first is possible confusion between the words “attended” and “watched,” because they mean two very different things and are measured in very different ways.
So the first problem is the definition of the question. The second is that there is no way to know the answer for sure. Crowd estimation is an art, and in the case of a crowd like that it’s based mostly on photos. Yesterday I quoted a crowd estimation expert (who was not from the Trump camp) who said that Trump didn’t have access to the photos that showed how relatively small the crowd was. So one could conclude that, although we don’t know the true size of the live crowd in DC, it was probably considerably smaller than at Obama’s inauguration, but that the Trump camp was using incomplete information about the live crowd.
That’s a case of alternative facts: using different photos to obtain your information. And of course it was compounded by a misinterpretation of his main point, in which the word “witness” did not mean “witness in person.”
“Alternative facts” are presented all the time, particularly in cases in which certainty is impossible. An excellent example is civilian deaths during a war (I wrote a lengthy post on the subject in 2007). Another is economic figures: income inequality and unemployment, just to name two favorites. How they are measured can make a world of difference.
Statistics can be used to prove almost anything, and they involve dueling “alternative facts.” This can be done maliciously and/or mendaciously, for propaganda purposes. Or—as Spicer rightly pointed out in his linked press conference—they can be the result of honest errors. They can also be the result of a bona fide disagreement on what is important and/or how to measure things.
To say that both sides don’t often choose among alternative facts is to deny reality. To pretend that alternative facts are Orwellian by definition is propaganda. They can be, but they often are not. But “alternative facts” was such a nifty phrase, so ripe for anti-Trump exploitation, that it could not be resisted.
[NOTE: This business of the WaPo annotating (supposedly fact-checking) the Spicer press conference got me to wondering whether this was done during the Obama administration. Of course, if it had been done, I highly doubt it was done in the same critical manner. But was it done at all, or is it an innovation just for Trump? Here’s Obama’s final press conference, back in mid-December—not annotated. However, shortly after the election Obama gave a press conference that was annotated.
But oh, what a difference in tone! Here’s a sample:
[OBAMA statement] We are indisputably in a stronger position today than we were when I came in eight years ago. Jobs have been growing for 73 straight months, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, the uninsured rate is at the lowest level on record, carbon emissions have come down without impinging on our growth, and so my instructions to my team are that we run through the tape, we make sure that we finish what we started, that we don’t let up in these last couple of months because my goal is on January 21, America’s in the strongest position possible and hopefully there’s an opportunity for the next president to build on that.
Number two, our work has also helped to stabilize the global economy and because there is one president at a time, I’ll spend this week reinforcing America’s support for the approaches that we’ve taken to promote economic growth and global security on a range of issues.
[WaPo annotation] Obama doesn’t want the whole Trump thing to overshadow his legacy too much.
Also, he seems to be making that case that he set Trump up to succeed ”“ with an economy on relatively solid footing.
That’s the sum total of what the WaPo has to say on the matter. I read all the annotations and couldn’t find a single one even mildly critical of Obama.
This made me curious to learn at what point the WaPo began these annotations. And that in turn led me to read some things that began a whole train of thought about this new practice of annotating transcripts. That’s a large enough topic to require another post, and I’m saving it for another day.]
